3 Ways to Quickly Improve your Marketing Database

Introduction

Nearly every IT Partner and most IT Vendors need to improve the quality of their marketing database.

Most marketing executives realize that this is important because there is no point creating thought-leading marketing content, if you can’t get that content in front of the right people.

In this blog, we outline 3 techniques that you can easily adopt, to quickly improve the quality of your marketing database.

#1: Add Firmographic Account Data

Adding Firmographic data just means that you add classification data to your customer and target accounts. You do this so that you can use basic data analysis to make better informed marketing decisions.

The 3 most important classifications are:

Industry

When you classify your accounts by industry, it helps you identify the industry sectors in which you have the most customers or target account relationships. You can then use this data to apply the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) strategy of “identify which accounts are the best for you, so you can target more of the same”.

In the real data example, below, you can see that our client is ‘strong’ in Construction. They might use this insight to increase their database of target accounts in the Construction Industry.

Headcount

Headcount, sometimes known as seat-size, helps you target the right size companies. This measure is MOST effective if you ALSO overlay profitability data, which you can get from your accounts department.

The objective is to figure out the size of company that is most profitably for you, so you can target more accounts of the same size.

Location

You use location data to make data-driven decisions on the types of marketing campaigns you should run within different industry sectors or groups of target accounts.

You will find that some sectors and target groups are naturally concentrated geographically, whereas for others, the opposite is true. As an example, financial service companies tend to be concentrated in major cities. Local Government and Education tend to be geographically dispersed.

For accounts that are concentrated into a small region, you might choose to run events, such as seminars or round-tables. For those that are geographically dispersed, you might choose blogs, webinars or videos.

Note that while the industry sectors I have used as examples, are relatively obvious, this is certainly not the case when you are working with some data sets, particularly data sets with a mix of industries. And you do not want to get this wrong. When you chose the wrong type of campaign for a target group, you “set yourself up to fail”.

Advert: StrategyMix can provide you with firmographic data (industry, headcount and location) for a fixed fee of US$0.36 / £0.30 / A$ 0.50 per account record.

#2: Build a list of Target Accounts

Once you have completed your data analysis, using your new firmographic data, you are ready to build a list of target accounts.

As a simple example, you might decide to build a list of target accounts based on the following firmographic data:

Industry = Financial Services

Headcount = 500 to 5000

Location = London

You can put this selection criteria into LinkedIn Sales Navigator, if you have this premium edition, you will find 105 companies (as at 24 July 2018).

It really is as simple as that. The trick though, is to make sure that you have the firmographic data to help you select the best search criteria.

Advert: StrategyMix will build you a list of target accounts for a fixed fee of US$0.36 / £0.30 / A$ 0.50 per account record. This might be useful if you are short of time.

#3: Gap Analysis / Target Account Contact Research

Now that you have your list of target accounts, the next job is to figure out if you have the right contacts from those target accounts in your database, and if not, then identify which contacts you’re missing, so you can find them and “Fill the Gaps”.

We adopt the following 3 step process:

Step 1: Position Coding

We use Position Coding to classify contacts by their job role.

As a simple example, the 5 job titles below would all be classified as “ITM”

Once you’ve completed your Position Coding, you can then run a Gap Analysis Report as shown below, for your nominated set of target accounts.

Where you see a red cross, you know that you have a gap in your database.

Position Coding and Gap Analysis Reports are both special data functions that we have built into the StrategyMix Marketing System. These functions are rarely available, if ever, in other Marketing Systems or CRMs.

Advert: StrategyMix will run a Gap Analysis Report for you, which includes the provision of a StrategyMix Marketing System on a temporary basis, for a fixed fee of US$0.15 / £0.10 / A$ 0.20 per account.

Step 3: Contact Research

Once you have identified the Gaps, you next need to “Fill the Gaps”, by identifying the missing contacts and adding them to your database.

As you identify each contact, you should ideally research their phone number and email address, although your ability to do this will depend on the legal regime in which you operate.

To identify the missing contacts, you can again use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which unfortunately is not 100% accurate but is still the best available option in the market (in our opinion).

Advert: StrategyMix can undertake contact research for you for a fixed fee of US$0.36 / £0.30 / A$ 0.50 per contact found. And yes, this is more expensive on a per contact basis than a list broker, but in this case, we are just providing you with your “missing data” and not selling you a whole list, one that has also been sold to others.

CONCLUSION

Quality marketing is dependent on a quality marketing database.

Nearly all IT Partners and IT Vendors should invest in improving the quality of their marketing database.

Adopting a methodical, account-driven, database building process will give you the best results.

This is a 3-step process:

Add Firmographic data to your existing customer and target accounts, so you know where to build

Build a list of target accounts or augment your existing accounts

Run a contact gap analysis and “fill the gaps”

If you have any questions or would like to make any comments, then please use the Comments Section below.

About StrategyMix

StrategyMix uses its own cookies as well as cookies from third parties. Cookies are used to remember your settings and for traffic measurement. By clicking OK, you consent to the use of cookies. If you do not wish to accept the use of cookies please click NO.
OkNoPrivacy policy